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DANE COUNTY AREA GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY

  Mailing Address:
  Dane County Area Genealogical Society
  PO Box 5652
  Madison, WI 53705-0652

Society e-mail address: widcags@gmail.com

Membership dues for 2012:
  $23.00/year individual or $28.00/year family ($8.00 discount if you get the newsletter only by e-mail)
  Membership year is 1 January-31 December
  Printable 2012 membership form (37 KB PDF file)


 Society Organizational Documents (PDF files)
  Plan of Merger (July 2006)
  Bylaws (initially adopted August 2006, amended October 2007)
  Policy and Procedures Manual (last revised October 2007)


DCAGS logo
Society Newsletters:
  31 January 2012 - DCAGS (264 KB PDF file)
  31 December 2011 - DCAGS (94 KB PDF file)
  30 November 2011 - DCAGS (102 KB PDF file)
  31 October 2011 - DCAGS (147 KB PDF file)
  30 September 2011 - DCAGS (93 KB PDF file)
  31 August 2011 - DCAGS (100 KB PDF file)
  31 July 2011 - DCAGS (122 KB PDF file)
  30 June 2011 - DCAGS (104 KB PDF file)
  31 May 2011 - DCAGS (113 KB PDF file)
  30 April 2011 - DCAGS (95 KB PDF file)
  31 March 2011 - DCAGS (102 KB PDF file)
  28 February 2011 - DCAGS (121 KB PDF file)
  31 January 2011 - DCAGS (111 KB PDF file)
  31 December 2010 - DCAGS (289 KB PDF file)
  30 November 2010 - DCAGS (92 KB PDF file)
  31 October 2010 - DCAGS (89 KB PDF file)
  30 September 2010 - DCAGS (90 KB PDF file)
  31 August 2010 - DCAGS (93 KB PDF file)
  31 July 2010 - DCAGS (102 KB PDF file)
  30 June 2010 - DCAGS (112 KB PDF file)
  31 May 2010 - DCAGS (107 KB PDF file)
  30 April 2010 - DCAGS (132 KB PDF file)
  31 March 2010 - DCAGS (98 KB PDF file)
  28 February 2010 - DCAGS (103 KB PDF file)
  31 January 2010 - DCAGS (63 KB PDF file)
  31 December 2009 - DCAGS (173 KB PDF file)
  30 November 2009 - DCAGS (221 KB PDF file)
  31 October 2009 - DCAGS (135 KB PDF file)
  30 September 2009 - DCAGS (116 KB PDF file)
  31 August 2009 - DCAGS (117 KB PDF file)
  31 July 2009 - DCAGS (110 KB PDF file)
  30 June 2009 - DCAGS (176 KB PDF file)
  31 May 2009 - DCAGS (107 KB PDF file)
  30 April 2009 - DCAGS (108 KB PDF file)
  31 March 2009 - DCAGS (102 KB PDF file)
  28 February 2009 - DCAGS (186 KB PDF file)
  31 January 2009 - DCAGS (103 KB PDF file)

Click here for access to newsletters published prior to 2009.

Note: Many (but not all) of the URLs listed in recent newsletters are “hot links.” If you click on the URL, your browser should go directly to the web page being referenced. (You must be using either Adobe Acrobat Reader version 5 or some version of Adobe Reader for these hotlinks to work.)


  President — Rollie Littlewood (2012)
  Vice-President — Jim Benes (2013)
  Secretary — DeAnn McAllan (2012)
  Treasurer — Joyce Peterson (2013)
  Immediate past president — Patricia L. Skubis 
  Standing Committee Chairs:
    Membership — Walker Crawford
    Public Relations — vacant
    Program and Education — vacant
    Newsletter — vacant
    Historian —  Sandy Zart
    Webmaster — Rollie Littlewood
        For elected officers, the final year of their current term in listed after their name
The Governing Board usually meets on the third Tuesday of each month. Contact the society president or see our monthly newsletter to get the time and location.



Upcoming Programs — 2010 – 2012

Time: 7:00 PM, first Thursday of every month, unless otherwise noted
Place: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (chapel), 4505 Regent St. (intersection of Regent St.&Segoe Rd.), Madison unless otherwise noted
Meeting Date   Program Description  
4 November 2010  Have you tried…? - Our speaker will be James L. Hansen, F.A.S.G, reference librarian extraordinaire and genealogical specialist at the Library of the Wisconsin Historical Society since 1974. Who can keep up with all the “new” genealogical resources becoming available every day? Jim will discuss of a variety of publications, new or “improved,“ that you might not have yet encountered.
The speaker has allowed us to post his handout (as a 131 KB PDF file) – click here to view it.
2 December 2010  Finding Those Who Served: Genealogy Resources at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum - Our speaker will be Russell Horton, Reference & Outreach Archivist for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum. Horton will talk about the 100+ year history of the Wisconsin Veterans Museum (WVM) and will describe the resources available to genealogists researching veterans from the Civil War through the present. Because the WVM focuses on military and veterans history, it not only has incredibly rich resources for researching soldiers, sailors, and veterans, but the staff has a level of familiarity and expertise that allows them to point genealogists in the right direction if their answer can’t be found at the WVM. With the 150th anniversary of the Civil War beginning next year interest in Civil War genealogy will increase exponentially, so Horton will be sure to highlight services and products relating to the veterans of that conflict. If you have a Wisconsin Civil War soldier in your family tree, bring in the name to learn more about their service.
The speaker has allowed us to post his handout (as a 150 KB PDF file) – click here to view it.
6 January 2011  Ways to Display Your Family Trees - Our speaker will be Pat Skubis, past-president of the Dane County Area Genealogical Society. Pedigree charts, fan charts, bow tie charts, genealogical tables, stitched samplers, photo charts, wall hangings, in books, on quilts, or on book bags are just a few of the ideas that will be covered. Projects that you can do or charts that you can have made for you, this program will give you ideas of just what is available and how much or little it can cost. If you have all ready created a family tree display, bring it to our meeting and share it with the other members.
The speaker has allowed us to post both her handout (as a 206 KB PDF file) and her entire PowerPoint presentation (as a 8.3 MB PDF file) – click here to view the handout OR here to view the PowerPoint presentation. All of the hyperlinks to vendor web pages are “live,” so that if you click on a URL (usually near the bottom of the page in the ) you can explore the referenced website just as Pat did during her talk.
3 February 2011  Meeting cancelled
3 March 2011  Genealogical Organization: From Papers to Research - Our speaker will be Ann L. Wells. She will share her thoughts on getting and staying organized. She will focus on both organizing all of our “papers” and on organizing our research plans. She is a woman who NEEDS to be very organized herself, as she many, many “irons in the fire” in her life. She was one of the founders of the British Interest Group of Wisconsin and Illinois, where she also organized a research trip to London. She is currently very active in the leadership of the McHenry County Genealogical Society, the Illinois State Genealogical Society, the Federation of Genealogical Societies, and the International Society for British Genealogy and Family History (ISBGFH); she is the director of the British Institute, an annual course sponsored by ISBGFH. And she does both personal and professional genealogical research. Be sure to come and hear her thoughts on how to keep your genealogical life in order.
Note: This is the talk originally scheduled for 3 February.
The speaker has allowed us to post her handout (as a 76 KB PDF file) – click here to view it.
7 April 2011  Lineage Societies - Our speakers will be DCAGS members Bob Stone and Ruth Simpson. What are lineage societies? When & how did they begin? What do they do? How does one apply for membership in one? Have you ever wondered how people get into such an organization or what these organizations try to accomplish? Do you know people who are members of a lineage society? What are the costs involved? All of these questions and more will be answered by Bob and Ruth.
Both speakers provided detailed handouts detailing information about the lineage society they were speaking about and the processes for applying for membership. They have allowed us to post these handouts     Daughters of the American Revolution     Sons of the American Revolution
5 May 2011  Wisconsin Civil War Ancestors - Our speaker will be Michael Edmonds, head of Digital Collections & Web Services at the Wisconsin Historical Society. He will show us the Society’s brand-new digital collection, “Wisconsin in the Civil War.” This new collection contains 16,000 pages of diaries, letters, memoirs, photos, and other original sources. Each page is indexed manually, and a name index of more than 35,000 people leads to documents where they are described or mentioned. Michael has been with the Society since 1982 and has spoken to us several times about the free online collections that his staff creates.
2 June 2011  The Power of Yes: A Case Study of Norwegian Immigration to Minnesota - Our speaker will be DCAGS member Joyce I. Nigbor. Joyce comments that her area of expertise over the fifty-plus years that she has pursed the hobby of genealogy has been German genealogy, until she took on this project to find four Norwegian sisters who immigrated to Minnesota. Joyce has found a lot of material in the year since she undertook this project; she will take the audience through the process of the last year using documents, Ancestry.com, and personal contact with a multitude of people including living descendants of these four women. She feels it’s been a wonderful experience helping a Norwegian friend of 33 years and his family realize their dream of knowing what happened to these women.
The speaker has allowed us to post her handout (as a 7 KB PDF file) – click here to view it.
7 July 2011  Reading Genealogy Books on the Web - Our speaker will be DCAGS president Rollie Littlewood. Many of us have heard of “Google Books.” This is a massive project which is digitally scanning thousands upon thousands of books from a number of research libraries and making the text of many books fully searchable on the Web. The Wisconsin Historical Society library is one very active participant in this project. A very important consideration in whether or not a particular book is fully searchable is whether or not the book is deemed to be under copyright protection. Several recent speakers at DCAGS meetings have touched on this subject. Rollie Littlewood will take the audience on a more thorough examination of some of the possibilities of searching for and reading books online, with tools for genealogists (and others) which have developed very rapidly over the past decade.
The speaker has allowed us to post his handout (as a 229 KB PDF file) – click here to view it. Note that all of the web links are “live” i.e., if you click on them you will be taken to the web page referenced.
4 August 2011  Branches and Leaves Filled in at Last - Our speaker will be DCAGS past-president Patricia Skubis. Like most researchers Pat has needles lost in haystacks or puzzle pieces waiting to be put in place. Recently two of her missing pieces have been found. One solved a 27-year-old mystery. The other helped her locate the marriage place of her great-grandmother. Pat will discuss what helped her solve these mysteries, which spanned Denmark, Australia, and the United States. She will talk about the various methods she used to verify the information she found and the advantages of sharing your information with other researchers.
The speaker has allowed us to post her handout (as a 159 KB PDF file) – click here to view it.
1 September 2011  The Flavor of Wisconsin: History and Culture through Recipes - Our speaker will be Terese Allen, author and food writer. After the meeting members are welcome to bring a recipe and/or favorite family food to share with other members. DCAGS will provide lemonade. So if you have a family recipe book or favorite recipe, bring it to share.
The speaker has allowed us to post her handout (as a 163 KB PDF file) – click here to view it.
Saturday
8 October 2011 
9:00 am – 3:30 pm		 Genealogy Fair: See details near the top of this web page.
The fair will be held in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 4505 Regent St., Madison (multiple rooms of the same building where our regular meetings take place).
Note: There will be no “regular” meeting on the first Thursday of October.
3 November 2011  Finding a Page in History - Our speaker will be DCAGS member Judi Page, who will speak on her experiences researching her French-Canadian ancestry. Judi is new both to DCAGS and to genealogical research, having been at it in earnest for just over a year, although the story of this particular search spans some 40 years. By overcoming many stumbling blocks, some common to all genealogists and some peculiar to her subject, Judi uncovered a fascinating family history stretching back to the earliest years of both New France and New England. In the process, she made contact with a Canadian fourth cousin once removed.
1 December 2011  Using Federal Records to Identify Immigrant Ancestors - Our speaker will be David McDonald, CGSM. He willl give us a look through federal records for clues on connecting individuals to homelands overseas.
5 January 2012  Save Your Family History with Photos in Fabric - Our speakers will be Vicki and Mike Shetter. Each one of us has our own family history and stories that we want to save and pass on to future generations. Combining vintage photos with fabric gives us a unique way to display these photos and to preserve and tell our stories. Explore photo restoration using photo editing techniques and learn the techniques for printing on fabric. You’ll also get some great ideas for displaying your own family photos in a new way.
Mike is a professional photographer and a Photoshop Professional; Vicki is a seamstress with a varied background. They have combined their interests in photography and sewing along with their love of history and genealogy and shared them with others while sharing their ideas and teaching classes across the country. They have a website at <www.softscrap.com>.
Important note: Our speakers will be traveling from the Appleton area on the day of the meeting. Poor driving conditions are a definite possibility in early January. If there is uncertainty about the weather on the day of the meeting, check your e-mail or this website in the late afternoon for a possible meeting cancellation notice.
2 February 2012  The 1940 Census - Our speaker will be Pat Skubis. On April 2nd the National Archives and Records Administration will be releasing the 1940 census online. Access will be FREE. To find yourself in the census (if you are 72 years old or older) will be a bit of a challenge. On the sites which will have the images of the 1940 census, you will need to know the enumeration district number in order to find the census form you want, then scroll through that enumeration district until you find your family. What will you find in this census? Pat will have us jump back in time to learn about the information that was asked by the census takers. Do you want to make it easier to search the census? Ancestry and FamilySearch will start indexing the census on April 2nd. As members of DCAGS we have been asked to help index the records. So a demonstration will be done and you will learn how to do indexing. Pat has found that working on an 1895 Iowa census will help her when the 1940 census is released. When you get home you can test drive an indexing sample. Come see what this effort will be all about.
1 March 2012  James L. Hansen will be the speaker; topic TBA
5 April 2012  Speaker and topic TBA
3 May 2012  Speaker and topic TBA
7 June 2012  Speaker and topic TBA
5 July 2012  Speaker and topic TBA
2 August 2012  Speaker and topic TBA
6 September 2012  Speaker and topic TBA
4 October 2012  Speaker and topic TBA
1 November 2012  Speaker and topic TBA
6 December 2012  Speaker and topic TBA

Handouts from some earlier DCAGS meetings:
Exciting New Developments at FamilySearch, by Maureen Brady (7 October 2010). Handout (15 “slides”; 5 pages) / Presentation (72 “slides”; 36 pages).


We’re proud to be an affiliate of the Wisconsin State Genealogical Society
DCAGS is a proud member of the Federation of Genealogical Societies

Announcements of special interest to society members: 
Citing staffing issues, the Wisconsin State Vital Records Office announced last fall that they were suspending all search appointment opportunies from 1 October 2010 until at least 28 February 2011. This office did open again for onsite searches in March, but with a much tighter restriction than before on the frequency of search appointments. Each researcher is now restricted to four hours of on-site searching in a three-month period. Afternoon appointments are no longer available.

The Wisconsin State Genealogical Society is sponsoring its 2012 Gene-A-Rama conference on 27-28 April 2012 in Green Bay. Periodically visit the WSGS website for further information as the plans develop for this conference.

Sally Jacobs, a local archivist who operates Jacobs Archival Services in Madison, has informed us that she has started a blog called “The Practical Archivist.” She describes it as “chock full of archiving tips and geeky tidbits for genealogists and keepers of the family photo album – giving away some of my best photo archiving tips at no charge.”

Each spring and fall the Division of Library-Archives of the Wisconsin Historical Society sponsors a series of genealogy classes; these usually meet on Saturday mornings in either the WHS Library in Madison or in the nearby Memorial Library. See Library-Archives Classes and Workshops for more detailed information. The six classes being offered in the fall of 2011 are “Genealogy is For Everyone” (17 September, Lori Bessler), “Ancestry.com” (22 October, Lori Bessler) [repeated 29 October], “Using Archival Collections” (12 November, Rick Pifer), “FamilySearch.org” (3 December, Lori Bessler), and “Online Genealogy” (10 December, Lori Bessler). Click on the title of any class for further details (time, fees, location, class coverage) about that class. Each class has separate registration, some may have limited enrollment. To register, download, print, fill-in, and mail the required registration form. Registration began 15 August 2011. A discount on the registration fee is offered to those who are members of either the Wisconsin Historical Society or the Wisconsin State Genealogical Society.

Are you a beginner at genealogy? Would you like to explore some (free) online guides to getting started in genealogy? Here’s one to try: Indexes to the RootsWeb Guides to Tracing Family Trees

Genealogy classes offered in the Dane County Area
Wisconsin Union Mini-courses
  Dates for next set of classes: three Tuesday evenings, 10-24 April 2012
  Location: UW-Madison campus (specific location TBD)
  Instructor: Sherry Lloyd
  For more information click here

Some other genealogical links of special interest:
A bit of society history:
The Dane County Genealogical Society (formerly known as the South Central Chapter of the Wisconsin State Genealogical Society)
and the Computer Assisted Genealogists of Southern Wisconsin (formerly known as the South Central Wisconsin PAF Users Group)
merged in September of 2006 to form the Dane County Area Genealogical Society



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This page was last modified on 24 January 2011


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